


Remnants of a War

by wanderlight (Aoftheis)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, First War with Voldemort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 16:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17063366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoftheis/pseuds/wanderlight
Summary: In the aftermath of the First War with Voldemort, Remus deals with betrayal, loss, and displacement.





	Remnants of a War

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to the lovely [last_radio](http://last_radio.livejournal.com) for the beta job. Originally this fic was intended as gen, but somehow, Remus/Sirius managed to insinuate itself. Believe what they tell you, children, slash fanfiction really is subversive.

**i. a different kind of unfaithfulness**

Remus stirs, blinks, and opens his eyes.

Since August, it has been a regular occurrence to be woken in the dead of night, and he has lost count of how many times it's happened; he rather expects it, by now. Each time, his first thought is, _this is it, this is the night_ , and he wonders whose grave the Order will have to dig this time, as sunrise dispels another Dark Mark from the sky. His own, perhaps, or James', or Peter's, or Sir-- but _no_ , that does not bear thinking about.

When he wakes now, though, there is no Floo summons from Dumbledore in the fireplace; no Sirius hurriedly pulling on his robes, searching frantically for his wand, rattling off a brief synopsis of the latest murder or rape or torture.

There is, however, a note resting on the peeling white paint of the windowsill above his side of the bed. Moonlight filtering through the windowpane -- he and Sirius still haven't found time to buy drapes -- casts the lettering into sharp relief.

_Moony--_  
Stay here, keep safe, don't leave the flat.  
\--S 

The scrawl is nearly illegible in its haste, a far cry from the copperplate handwriting drilled into a six-year-old prodigal heir by a private tutor. Remus reads between the lines of its message -- correctly, though he doesn't know this for truth until twelve years have passed -- as nothing more than a display of Sirius' usual over-protectiveness, cultivated by three years of visiting a battered, bleeding boy in the Hospital Wing and six years of moonlit transformations and companionship after that.

Pushing back the blankets, Remus tumbles off the double mattress to the floor, untangling his ankle from the grasp of a sheet, and pads quietly out of the bedroom.

The front door is ajar; so like Sirius, forgetting to close it tight behind him. Dim light from the single bulb in the hallway beyond filters in through the crack, illuminating the sparseness of the flat. If he checks downstairs, Remus knows, he'll find Sirius' motorbike gone, as he has increasingly over the past month. Either it's a fly, to clear his mind; or a mission he's been forbidden to speak of; or it could be that which the suspicious corners of his mind whisper about when his guard is down: _seen in Knockturn Alley, passing information_ , spy...

There are so many questions that he doesn't ask, so many things that he can't bring himself to say. Last month Remus woke up after the moon alone and aching, and the next morning, over tea and burnt toast, Sirius told him that the Order had brought down a feral werewolf. He never asked who fired the silver bullet, Sirius never volunteered the information, and _that_ , Remus thinks, was when the silences started. These days, silence is more common than speech, even when he and Sirius are in the same room.

Remus runs his hand through sleep-mussed hair, a cascade of brown-gold-silver, and stares down through the glass of the living room window for a long moment into the shadows of the quiet alleyway. Finally he returns to the bedroom, leaving the door wide open behind him, and lies down slowly in a cold bed, alone with his worries and suspicions.

If he's lucky, he won't have his usual nightmare ( _green light: no, not Sirius, please not Sirius; where are the last of the werewolves? -- a silver bullet on a moonlit night -- Avada... Avada..._ ), because when he wakes screaming, there is no guarantee any longer that there will be warm arms wrapped around his waist, no guarantee of sleep-murmured reassurances: _s'only a reflection of the lamp, Moony, go back to sleep..._

*

Dawn arrives on the doorstep far too early, but it does not bring the rumble of the motorbike with it. Remus brews tea, butters toast, and tries not to look at the clock too often as he sits down at the battered wooden dining table with some Order paperwork.

When a tawny owl arrives bearing the Daily Prophet and the news of the day -- _convict, murderer, traitor: Black_ \-- he chokes on a mouthful of scalding Earl Grey -- the ink on the newsprint is suddenly spidering, blurring in his vision, and it might be because of the spilled tea seeping through the fibres, or it might be because of the tears slipping down his cheeks. Steady hands mop up the spill, but the tea has left a bitter aftertaste in his throat, and it reminds him remarkably of betrayal.

Exactly four and a half minutes of noiseless, shuddering shock, alone with the white walls of the kitchen: this is all he allows himself.

Then, without a falter, he pulls on his coat and Apparates to the Order headquarters. When he arrives to the scene (chaos and celebration bleeding into each other) he thinks distantly that it's lucky he didn't splinch, but he also doesn't think that he would really care. Strange how it's what you _don't_ see coming that gets you in the end.

 

**ii. falter, and falter again**

Remus is washing the bloodstains out of his robes (might be his, might be someone else's; he's not really sure) when there is a pop! of Apparation in the front entrance of their — his -- _the_ \-- flat.

Perhaps he should be worried, perhaps he should be holding his wand at the ready just in case, but he feels nothing but a sense of void. There have been Muggle torturings and celebrations-turned-riot every night since Voldemort's fall, the collective dying breath of his followers. Remus has been on duty for the past twenty-four hours, running on a combination of adrenaline and desperation, refusing breaks. It isn't as if he has anything to come home to.

Muttering a drying spell over his robes -- it'll have to do, for now -- Remus steps out of the kitchen. It takes a few blinks before his weary mind wakes up and recognizes the man: tall, with a powerful bearing and a shock of untidily thick blonde hair; Auror Frank Longbottom, who has saved Remus' life three times in the past month.

"Remus." There is nothing of Frank's usual affability about him; he looks harried, older than his twenty-six years, like if he hasn't slept in days -- probably hasn't -- as he nods a quick hello and leans against the closed door. "Dumbledore has a few leads on Lucius Malfoy that might --"

"Didn't Malfoy claim that he killed those Muggles under Imperio?" Remus cuts in. Out of habit, neither of the two exchange greetings of pleasantries; there is no time for it, in war.

A sardonic smile twists Frank's face. He begins to pace back-and-forth, between the hallway table and the wall-hook where Sirius left his leather jacket hanging. "Yes; what a bloody mess. Can't prove his guilt without actual evidence, is the thing, although we all know Lucius Malfoy being pure as the driven snow is about as likely as Sirius betraying Ja--"

Frank stops dead in his tracks, and what little colour is left in his face drains out of it. "God, Remus, I'm -- _fuck_ , I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you --"

It is -- it _had been_ \-- a running joke among the Order members, this one; they make lighthearted fun of their circumstances, when they can, in order to remain sane while they risking lives on a daily basis; their own, and also their families', by association.

Remus swallows, then speaks around the sudden tightness in his throat (attempts lightness; fails). "Old habits die hard, Frank, don't worry about it. We didn't know, none of us knew, I'm fine." The words have become rote over the past few days; they sound mechanical to his ears as they fall on the heavy silence. "Are you and Alice joining me?" he asks finally, after a pause.

"No," Frank replies, tracing his finger over the odds and ends littering hallway table (cigarettes, a joke wand, the broken clasp of a dog collar, Sirius' keys). "Sturgis thinks he has an idea of where we can find Rabastan Lestrange; there is evidence against him, the only problem is _finding_ the bastard." Frank flicks his wand, makes as if to Apparate, then stops himself and says, hesitantly, "Remus, if you -- if you need anything, or just want to talk, or, _anything_ \-- Alice and I --"

"Thanks," Remus says shortly, cutting him off. "I'm fine," he says again. If he repeats the two syllables often enough, perhaps they will become true, out sheer force of habit.

Frank nods, briefly, and meets his eyes. "No rest for the weary," he says, and Apparates.

*

And the following morning, the Frank and Alice he knew are gone, replaced by vacant shells destined to live out their lives in St. Mungo's. The Order snags the Lestranges, and Barty Crouch Jr. besides. Still: it seems like an unfair sacrifice, especially for little Neville Longbottom, who is, Remus thinks with a pang, Harry's age.

 

**iii. the fallout of miscalculation**

"Their messiah may be dead," says Albus Dumbledore to the assemblage of grim-faced wizards and witches, "but his beliefs live on -- at least, for a time." His voice echoes in the cavernous spaces of the deserted barn, and Remus wonders cynically if the man conducts these sessions in the half-gloom just for theatricality's sake.

He has to admit that the shadows do help to hide the empty spaces in the small crowd: the ranks of the Order are somewhat more spare than they were three years ago. The organization isn't about to be disbanded, though, far from it. Remus had never given much thought to the end of the war, assumed that Voldemort would fall and that would be the end; he certainly hadn't expected this. Any of this.

"Propaganda and pardons flow from the Ministry offices, as easily as money flows from its coffers, but there are still the shadier aspects of the aftermath to clean up, and that duty falls to us. Investigating wizards of questionable loyalty, searching for suspected Death Eaters who are suddenly _away visiting foreign lands_ " -- a shrewd half-smile twists Dumbledore's expression, at this, and quickly disappears with his next words -- "and finding the bodies of all those who are missing."

As Dumbledore speaks, Remus' gaze is drawn by the hollow grimness twisting Severus Snape's face -- _the signature of grief_ \-- and wonders what he's lost. But when Dumbledore finishes, he speaks to Snape privately, and by the time Remus has received his instructions, Snape is gone.

*

 _Indispensable_ , the Order members say, warmly and sadly, when they speak of Remus these days, _don't know what we would do without him, really -- poor boy, so unfortunate_. Their image of him is shaped by what they see when he is in the field, though, when he runs fuelled on adrenaline and the desperation displaced other emotions: a combination of lightning-fast reflexes, steel nerves, a kind gesture here and a just-in-time counter-curse there.

Remus intends to keep it that way. It is only when he is alone (walking down the back alleys of London, buying groceries at the corner store, in the kitchen of the flat) that Remus allows himself to crumble. He closes Sirius' things into cardboard boxes, locking them in the back of a closet only to have to open it again when he stumbles across an old, worn shirt in the laundry (perhaps he holds it to his chest for a fraction too long) or a note slipped into one of his dog-eared novels. And in the evenings, hours pass as he sits unmoving on the living room sofa: in wait, unsure of what exactly he is waiting for. Absolution? Finality? Closure?

Because there's something _not quite right_ about it all, something which has to do with the timing of Secret-Keepers and the look in Sirius' eyes whenever they kissed, whenever he had his hands tangled in Remus' hair and body pressed flush up against the wall, and Remus' instincts continue to say what his mind has refused to think about for a fortnight.

 _It couldn't have been Sirius, because Sirius loved James and Lily and Harry. It couldn’t have been Sirius, because Sirius loved_ me.

The boy has always subdued the wolf, though, and Remus overrides his instinct, pushes the no to the back of his mind under a façade of acceptance, because there is really nothing else he can do.

So when Remus finds himself staring at the painted fingernails of the receptionist in the Ministry's atrium, he honestly has no idea how he arrived there, and when Dumbledore arrives to firmly lead him away across its shiny dark floors before he can open his mouth and say something about Sirius Black that would likely land him on the Ministry's watchlist, he thinks, _really, what did I expect?_

 

**iv. ashes to ashes**

No one has had time to mourn for the past year, not when new names were written up under the "Losses" section of the Daily Prophet each day. So, on the twenty-second of November, the Order holds a collective funeral for all those it has lost (far too many, and half of the graves are empty).

It's strange, Remus thinks as Dumbledore intones eulogies under the spreading branches of an oak tree, that this should be happening during the season which begins the descent into the darkness of winter. Much more fitting for Voldemort's Fall to be in spring: sunlight and blossoms and new beginnings. Even so, the chill in the air and the falling leaves whisper _life_ , not _death_ , and there is a _something_ in the air which evokes the feeling of release. This is the last time the Order members will meet _en masse_ ; the final sparks of Voldemort's fire have been stamped out, and the Wizarding World is settling into the fragile peace it had Before.

And then: _BANG_. It's loud, it's sudden, it's off to his left: within moments, Remus has his wand at the ready and a defensive hex on his lips. It takes him a moment to register the cause of the disturbance: Elphias Doge and the scattered remains of the flower stand, lilies and roses crushed and crumbled now.

"Sorry," Doge whispers abashedly, flicking his wand to straighten the mess, and a scattering of embarrassed laughter runs through the crowd. It's somewhat hesitant, though, and rusty from disuse.

As Remus slips his wand back into his robes, he notices six other wizards and witches unobtrusively doing the same.

When James and Lily are remembered, Remus makes the appropriate speeches, but the past is echoes around him, and his mind is on another funeral. Remus' parents died in a Muggle accident, the year after he graduated, and there had been Sirius and James and Peter to fall back on. Now, there are only hesitantly sympathetic gestures and unsure words from near-strangers, and it will have to be enough.

(The Order members are aware that he is a werewolf who just lost three of his best friends to the Death Eaters -- _and a fourth to Azkaban_ \-- but they gauge their condolences without knowing that he has been sleeping with the traitor, the one who brought it all falling down, since James and Lily's wedding.)

Tomorrow night the moon is full, and he doesn't want to think about waking up, wracked with pain and covered in blood and very, very alone. Instead, Remus tries to ignore the sad looks and whispers, the half-started sentences of concern. When McGonagall makes to approach him, he turns hurriedly and --

\-- walks straight into Dumbledore.

"Remus," Dumbledore begins, voice low and full of everything Remus doesn't want to discuss, and Remus cuts him off before he can start in with the platitudes.

"I'm all right."

After a moment, Dumbledore speaks. "I regret having to ask this, Remus, but -- what happened, none of us expected it. I understand you may not want to talk about it -- but I _must_ know, and you knew him best. Did you notice anything suspicious? Was there any indication whatsoever in Sirius' behaviour?"

"No," he says aloud, looking Dumbledore straight in the eye. _Yes_ , his mind supplies, _hungry kisses of apology which came out of nowhere, long glances which ended in silence, hesitation and hundreds and hundreds of things unspoken, and I thought we would be all right, I thought that we were holding things together, and I suppose I thought wrong but nothing seems right and I don't know what to think._

There is something piercing in the aged wizard's expression -- he's a Legilimens, Remus knows he could press... but he doesn't. "Thank you," Remus whispers, and then it pushes itself past his lips before he can close them: "James and Lily -- Sirius. Did... will there --"

It doesn't take Legilimency to perceive Remus' unspoken question. "There won't be a trial," Dumbledore says, with more gentleness than Remus has seen him show in months, "I tried to persuade the Minister when I spoke to him yesterday, but there won't be a trial. I'm sorry, Remus." He does not speak of the incident at the Ministry.

 _Why?!_ Remus wants to scream, but he knows it's useless; all the other significant _whys_ he's ever asked have gone unanswered, no matter the circumstances. In the bewildered voice of a child: _why does the moon hate me, Mummy?_ In anger, at the dehumanizing done by the Werewolf Registry: _why should I bother if all it does is brand me and fuck me over?_ And in marvel, when a grey-eyed man pressed him into a corner after James and Lily's _I do's_ and, quite soberly, traced his jawline with soft lips. After all these years, Remus has learned to stop thinking _why_ at all, and push the no to the back of his mind.

\-- Abruptly, Remus asks, "What about Harry?"

"Harry has been sent to his aunt and uncle's, Remus," Dumbledore says, firmly, if not unkindly. "Minerva agrees with me. There is an ancient protection spell which can only be worked with blood magic -- and it will be good for him, growing up away from it all."

Remus has heard whispers of this, and half-expected it. He looks away, and replies, "All right," but what he is really saying is, _I couldn't take him anyway, I'm a bloody mess myself._

"Take care, Remus," Dumbledore says, "and remember that this is the beginning, not the end," but Remus has already turned away.

He leaves the reception early, without making his goodbyes, and rain begins to pour from the darkening sky as he walks down empty side-streets. Ironically fitting, that; Sirius once remarked that the weather always seemed to reflect the -- but no. Enough of that, now.

 

**v. displacement**

These days, Remus finds solace in dreams -- wraps himself in night and in-between places, comes to hate the tormenting bleak light that comes with morning, along with its unforgiving truths and demands. In his dreams there are James and Lily, holding a small cooing bundle and smiling; Sirius, sitting cross-legged and knee-to-knee with him in front of a roaring fire; scarlet and gold and rich memories from a time before prolonged silences, before Secret-Keepers, before stilted conversation spent deliberately avoiding the questions they all wanted to ask.

*

Remus stirs, blinks, and opens his eyes.

And the dreams are slow in fading: flashes of green light and the harsh countenance of the moon no longer. Rather, now: grey eyes and wicked smiles, sharp cheekbones and lips and hands on his waist, and he almost closes his eyes, almost gives in to the urge to sink back into dreams of better times, because even if he knows _now_ that it must have all been false, he was happy _then_.

But the bed is empty, and the hallway closet is full of a traitor's things, so Remus breathes around the ache in his chest and stumbles out of a tangle of sheets (clean: he always remembers to do the laundry, still) to the kitchen, flicks his wand at the lightbulb and sits slumped on the linoleum, haloed by its harsh yellow light, until he has managed to wipe from his consciousness all vestiges of the sensual burn in Sirius' eyes.

_This is not real. Reality: Voldemort has fallen, the wizarding world is moving on with life, James and Lily and Peter are gone, and Sirius is --_

(And so he gives into the deep-seated instinct which pleads for escape from the omnipresent fallen-angel of anguish: to run to the ends of the earth, to never look back upon this mess. Once upon a time, there was the stag and the rat and the dog, and he belonged; now, he beaten and battered, he is driftwood.)

The next day, Remus writes a series of reassuring letters explaining his departure in polite terms, seals them, owls them, and begins to pack his bags. Some of his belongings he leaves behind: the books Peter bought for him, the tea set James and Lily gave them three months ago, the scarlet jumper Sirius borrowed more often than not and wore around the kitchen on lazy Saturday mornings. Before dawn he's set to leave London, and as the first rays of sunlight spread over the city, he locks the door to the flat and makes sure to close it tight behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, I'm about seven years late in uploading all of my fic to the AO3. Better late than never? I miss fandom — come say hi @aoftheis on [twitter](http://twitter.com/aoftheis/) or [tumblr](http://aoftheis.tumblr.com).


End file.
